Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.

This question caught me on the hop. We are a very small family. Beyond meeting up, and supporting each other, on the good days and the bad, we pretty much conform. We have high days and holidays. Long walks, short walks. Shared experiences and adventures. We also do the humdrum and the mundane. Our one idiosyncratic tradition is the purchase of chocolate eclairs to celebrate, commiserate or just perk up a dull day.

Specifically, a chocolate eclair marks the death of a family member who was run over and killed while walking her dog. She loved chocolate eclairs and never needed an excuse to buy a box of four to share with a cup of tea. Our continued purchase of eclairs, after her death, doesn’t come from a place of sadness. It is a sense of solidarity.

I was caught on the hop because I have never bothered to photograph eclairs and to many who read this blog an eclair may be a mystery. One shockingly bad photo in my archive.

Maybe one of my tasks in 2024 should be to learn to bake eclairs. Not as a replacement for the traditional ‘box of four’ but as a useful life skill.

Our dogs are the colours of a chocolate eclair.